Toussaint's Private French Notebook

Possessive Pronouns

“Possessives” refers to possessive adjectives in the first two sections. You should be able to complete both lessons in a single day, but I’m going to give you two days, so that you can work out the plurals. I’m going to bet that you have difficulty with notre vs. nos, but you’ll figure it out and finish these lessons fairly quickly. To get a quick overview and hear the possessives, go here:

Personal Adjectives come in various forms in French, and must agree in number and gender to the modified noun. There is also a condition where the modified noun is feminine, but the possessive adjective used is the masculine form. This occurs when the possessive adjective comes before a vowel sound, which makes sense when you see an example.

Think of saying, my friend Adele in French. It would be “ma amie Adele” and that sounds strange. Instead you say “mon amie Adele”, and forget about the gender rule for the sake of sound. If you have a silent “h” as in “histoire préférée” (my favorite story) it would again be “mon histoire préférée” vice “ma histoire préférée”.

Two other rules to note: a possessive adjective must be repeated before each noun, which can sound repetitive to an English speaker, i.e. Je dois écrire à ma soeur, à mes parents et à mon oncle (I must write to my sister, to my parents, and my uncle). An English speaker would just say “my sister, parents and uncle”. The other rule concerns using “ils” as a singular possessive adjective when only one object is possessed by each person, i.e. Ils attachment leur ceinture de sécurité (Each person has only one seat belt).

Duolingo added a third part to this module, containing two lessons, designed to teach “possessive pronouns”. They are different than possessive adjectives.

In French, possessive pronouns indicate both the possessor and the number and the gender of the object possessed: le mien indicates that the possessor is ‘I’ and that the possession is masculine singular. Depending on the context, le sien, la sienne, les siens, les siennes may mean ‘his’, ‘hers’, or ‘its’. Note that for the others, all four forms of each possessive pronoun have one English translation.